


father to son

by jayquxck



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amputation, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blackwatch Era, Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Gore, Other, Overwatch - Freeform, Whump, jesse lost his arm, reyes is best dad, whooops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27102631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayquxck/pseuds/jayquxck
Summary: gabriel doesn’t know what to do. jesse only has one arm, and the train’s only going as fast as it can go. time is running out.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	father to son

**Author's Note:**

> just some good old father/son angst with reaper and jesse!!   
> based off of that one comic by gunnslaughter on tumblr (here’s the comic dub; https://youtu.be/pt3hDkOYcps) but it’s got a bit of a changed plot and a few added details of my choosing because i’m PICKY   
> anyways i hope you enjoy!! ❤️

Gabriel focused on the rattle of the transport, rather than the bleeding child in his arms. 

Between the forty minutes when the two of them arrived at the Route 66 for some unfinished business on Jesse’s  
part and the five minutes after the explosion went off, Gabriel managed to hop onto an empty subway to find his way back into town. He knew that some of the best doctors in the world were just beyond the border, back home, where Gabriel had been training Jesse for the past few weeks. 

Jesse. Right. 

Gabriel harshly glanced down at him, a jolt of panic coursing through his veins when he remembers that Jesse is still there. Shallowly breathing, eyes shut, pale as a vampire… but alive. Gabriel could tell, even through his closed eyelids and tired expression that Jesse was drifting in and out of consciousness. Just by the way his breath hitched every now and then, like he was startled by something, but he wouldn’t move. Gabriel pressed a hand to his forehead, reaching over and scooping the remaining attached parts of Jesse’s arm up and laying it flat on Jesse’s chest. He’d tied a makeshift tourniquet already, but it hadn’t stopped the bleeding completely, and so Gabriel laid it flat so it would stop bleeding at least a little. 

“Hey, kid,” Gabriel taps the side of Jesse’s face, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to startle him awake, “stay with me, Jesse. Keep your eyes open. We’re almost there.” 

Jesse’s eyes blink open wide, like he’d been struck by lightning, but immediately after the sudden tug back into consciousness fades he squints at the bright lights, reaching up to shield his eyes. “My hat,” Jesse says, weakly, voice lacking its usual suave and confident demeanor, and Gabriel doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, “I need my hat.” 

Nodding, Gabriel brushes his hair off of his forehead carefully. “I’ll get you your hat, kid. How are you feeling?” 

There’s a long pause, and Jesse swallows all the spit and possibly blood in his mouth. “Cold,” he says faintly before his eyes flutter shut again. Gabriel can feel his heart start to pound nervously, and suddenly he feels as if he can’t breathe. 

Blood loss. What did he really expect, though? 

With that thought in mind, he taps Jesse on the head again. “I’ll warm you up as soon as we get you to the doctor,” he promises him like he was talking to a five-year-old. Gabriel’s voice remained stoic but it had a more caring undertone to it. This wasn’t Soldier: 24 talking, or Commander Reyes, or even jefe; this was Gabriel Reyes, and he was scared. He was terrified. “Just stay with me, Jesse, I need you to look up at me, eyes open,” he reminds, and Jesse’s eyes squint their way back open, “and breathe. Got that?” 

He shivers, but nods, curling up a bit in his lap. “You got it, doc,” he says, sounding weak, but alive, “just make sure I get my hat back.” 

“I’ll get your hat.” 

Jesse needed help, and fast, but the train was only moving as quickly as it could go and Jesse really looked like he was grasping at straws. All the color had drained from his face and neck, and the fingers on his hand were starting to turn blueish. He was freezing cold, and his eyes looked sunken in and tired. Gabriel silently said a prayer, crossing himself before looking back down at Jesse and running a shaking hand through his hair. 

The explosion caught the both of them off guard, he suspects: Jesse was stuck right in the middle of it. Ashe and her gang immediately took off as soon as they were both on the ground, but Bob stuck around for a minute or two before trailing behind everyone else. 

He barely heard Jesse call out his name before he was on the ground, ears ringing, head pounding. His vision and hearing were fuzzy, but he could so clearly hear Jesse scream out in agony, and the sound of something snapping, and something ripping apart, and then... silence. 

It was a long while before Gabriel completely came to. The silence wasn’t really silence; Gabriel just couldn’t hear for a moment. There was wailing coming from the opposite direction, loud and painful sobbing, and although Gabriel couldn’t think or hear very well he knew Jesse needed help. 

Bob’s thundering footsteps didn’t add to the pounding in his head as he ran over. Jesse was crying like no other, and Gabriel immediately tried to make him stop. He tried to talk some sense into him, but couldn’t get anything out over Jesse’s sobbing. “My arm,” he screamed, face dripping with soaking wet tears, “he took my arm, jefe, he ripped it off-“ 

“Calm down, calm down,” Gabriel ripped the sleeve off of his shirt and took Jesse’s bleeding stump with care, holding him still by pushing his hand onto Jesse’s chest, and he pulled the tourniquet as tight as it could go. 

Jesse let out an agonizing scream, obviously hurt but Gabriel had no time to reflect on that before he hoisted the kid up and started to carry him out. He didn’t respond to Jesse’s babbling, until one clear sentence came out. “My hat,” he’d muttered, once he’d stopped crying, “I hafta get my hat back.” 

Looking back on it, Gabriel probably could’ve gotten his hat for him right then and there; it was somewhere in the ash and as it sifted away the scenery became clearer. Present time, Gabriel knew, somewhere deep in his mind that he’d have to go back and get it. 

Now, Gabriel looked back out to the blurring scenery of the subway tunnels; old and forgotten graffiti that nobody will ever get a good look at, mostly. He tried to figure out what a few of the murals were (he vaguely noticed a frog with headphones on in one of them, but he was sure it was his imagination) just to get his mind off of a few things. When he finally looks back to Jesse, he’s drifted off again. “Jesse.” he shakes the cowboy now, panic coursing through his veins like a drug. “Come on, cowboy, you have to stay awake just for this bus ride. We’re almost there.” 

The panic melts away as his eyes wobble back open, and he nods weakly. Gabriel looks down at him. “You’re gonna be alright, kid.” he bites back a small, well thought out eulogy he’d written in his head on the whole subway ride, just in case something happens. He decided not to, though. If Jesse dies, he’ll give his eulogy at the funeral. “And I’ll getcha your hat.” 

Jesse nods, head lolling back as if he couldn’t control it before it would loll forward again until he was laying flat once more. “My dad gave it to me. I need it.” Gabriel watched out the window again, but he nodded understandingly.

From what Gabriel could piece together from the little tidbits McCree unknowingly gave him, Jesse grew up on a farm with just his father and mother. His parents didn’t pay much attention to him, because they had an entire farm to run and so they didn’t care much for little old baby Jesse. Because of this, Jesse spent the majority of his years growing up trying to make his parents proud of him, mostly to no avail since they didn’t know their own son well enough to even feel proud. But, according to Genji, Jesse’s father gave him that hat after Jesse won his first rodeo. He’s rarely taken it off since. 

“I’ll get your hat, kid,” Gabriel promises in a small voice and Jesse nods at him, eyes shutting for about five seconds before he jolted, suddenly sitting bolt upright, causing Gabriel to nearly jump and knock him over. He scrambled to get a grip on Jesse; he’d lost so much blood Gabriel wasn’t sure if he’d be able to move on his own. 

As if Gabriel was trying to steady him, Jesse grabbed onto Gabriel’s shirt with a vice-like grip, pulling himself closer to Gabriel’s chest. He panting like he’d just ran a marathon. “Gabriel,” he begins, pausing to catch his breath, and Gabriel stares at him with wide and terrified eyes- 

“I don’t wanna die.” 

Gabriel immediately feels his heart sink several stories, and his entire mind stops its whirring that it’d been so occupied with for the past hour and it focuses on one thing now, and one thing only; 

I have to keep Jesse McCree alive. 

Usually, when he felt guilty or scared, it would subside after a few minutes. But this shook him right to his core; Gabriel was terrified, more scared than he’d ever been in his entire life because the life of a seventeen-year-old kid is suddenly in his hands and he has to handle it himself like the absolute fucking grade-A parent he is. 

He stays quiet for a very long time. Gabriel doesn’t know what to say. Gently, he presses on Jesse’s chest to get him to lay back down again, and he sets the bleeding stump that was one time a human arm flat once more. “Just hold still,” he said, voice barely above a whisper as to avoid the choked sobs that could come out, “deep breaths, kid, you aren’t going to die…”

Jesse’s arm reaches up and he shields his eyes with his forearm. Gabriel puts one of his arms beneath his shoulders and another under his knees and just lifts ever so slightly, to keep Jesse from passing out and potentially choking on his tongue, sort of like he was cradling a baby. 

With his free hand now, he ran his hand through Jesse’s hair comfortingly. “Just relax, mijo,” he says finally, blinking tears into the far back of his head, “I’ve got you.” 

In the distance, another train wails.


End file.
